I wanted to share this highly customized GameCube keyboard controller I built for use with Animal Crossing. Since the first AC game doesn’t support keyboard input, I used a Pi Pico to listen for keypresses and send simulated analog stick movements to the game, automating typing in Animal Crossing at a tool-assisted speedrun level. It works a treat! I designed the keycaps in FreeCAD and printed them on a Bambu P1P with an AMS and two different colors of PLA. The code and design files are available for free on GitHub.

And a full build/demonstration video is available here (I ended up making it do a lot more than just typing) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw8Alf_lolA

  • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    1 day ago

    Very cool. Gotta post this one to the mechanical keyboard communities too. Yes, yes, it looks like it’s a membrane under there, but this is one of the nicer sets of 3D printed keycaps that I’ve seen.

    • hunterirving@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      9·
      1 day ago

      Yeahhh, it’s a membrane keyboard. Though I have seen others gut the internals and replace them with mechanical switches. I’ll see if I can find some keyboard communites to share to - thanks for the idea!

  • EK13@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    Thanks for sharing! The keycaps are cool but the video demo was next level! Every time I thought that was surely all you could do with it, there was another, more impressive application.

    Also when you were showing off the image creator I was surprised there was no reference to a certain 80s music video. Little did I know…

    • hunterirving@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      Thanks so much for watching! In the beginning, I really thought it would just be the typing automation, but as time went on I had more and more intrusive thoughts ideas for features to add.

      I happen to be a big fan of that 80s music video :-) I think this was the third time it’s made an appearance on my YouTube channel.

      • EK13@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        10 hours ago

        I actually ended up watching all your other videos too since they weren’t too long and I liked them all - definitely my kind of content! I thought the Labo stuff was especially cool so I’m looking forward to that next video you’re teasing!

        • hunterirving@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          2·
          6 hours ago

          Wow, thanks for watching! Yes, the next big project will be Labo-related, though I might post another smaller project in the interim. Labo is such a fun concept. I guess I get why it wasn’t a huge success, but I’m glad Nintendo gave it a shot anyway.

    • hunterirving@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      9·
      1 day ago

      $10 at a local thrift store! I used to see them everywhere, but this was the first I’ve seen in years…

  • tehmics@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    1 day ago

    How fast can you actually type on it before the game UI can’t keep up? Are you keeping some kind of input buffer to deal with that?

    • hunterirving@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      10·
      1 day ago

      Yep, it uses an input buffer. I ran some tests it seems to max out around 45wpm. If you type faster than that, the characters will still be added to the buffer and get processed, but you’ll eventually have to sit and wait for the movements to play out (at about 45wpm). For reference, my best rate unassisted (using a standard GameCube controller) was about 20wpm.